A private Rangers Instagram account has sparked speculation with supporters attempting to decrypt its purpose.

Fans of the Ibrox club discovered a private social media account on Instagram followed by a number of first-team players.

The account - rfcps22 - has 69 posts and is followed by 38 users, including current Rangers first-team players.

Nicolas Raskin - who is close to a move to Rangers from Standard Liege - is also following the private account.

READ MORE: Ianis Hagi's gruelling Rangers injury comeback revealed by Popescu

Supporters first tried to uncover the meaning of the account last night when a post on Twitter questioned what the account was used for.

Some fans suggested it could have been a private shopper account or a PlayStation group for the first-team.

But it appears the account is used as a method of increasing team interaction as well as sharing training clips and tactical notes - and used by the playing squad.

It is a method Steven Gerrard first put in place during Covid when he was Rangers manager.

It was previously reported that session clips and books for the players to read would be posted on the account - as well as it being a place for the squad to interact while away from the training ground.

Glasgow Times:

With that in mind, it appears that the account could be used by Michael Beale on his return to Rangers, in keeping with the methods he used alongside Gerrard in Glasgow.

Gerrard also created a private first-team Instagram account at Aston Villa for similar reasons.

Explaining the account, he told Birmingham Live: "We want to get as much information into the players as we can, we don’t want them stuck in a classroom for a long time.

"We want to try and be creative, we also don’t want to just give them information you and I both know they will forget, it’s basically used to put reminders on. If we have a team meeting for example, we can remind them of what happened in the team meeting, what was said, reminders of key information.

"It’s just another way of communicating to the players. When the leave this building they obviously have families and other things to take their mind off what has happened at work, so it’s just a way of reminding them of the good stuff we do. We joined at a time where we didn’t have the luxury of a pre-season, where you can do a lot of classroom stuff and get a lot of information across, so we think it's a really useful tool."

He added: "We put birthday stuff on there, if someone has come in with something from a clothing point of view that doesn’t meet the standard then you can be reminded of that. If something happens in training where you get nut-megged or you score an own goal, or like I did one day when I fell on my backside, you can be reminded of it, so you’ve got to be careful.

"It’s not just Aston Villa stuff that goes on there, we might see something from Man City, we might see something from Bayern Munich, something from Real Madrid, a quote, it might be a tactic, something that happens in a game that we or a young player can work off."

Glasgow Times:

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